PHILADELPHIA—The last words from the Florida Gulf Coast players Sunday night, after they made NCAA Tournament history, came from guard Bernard Thompson: “Dunk City is coming to Arlington, so everybody be ready.”

Everybody watching across America, which has adopted the team that might be the biggest Cinderella of them all. And everybody who might play the Eagles. They’re coming straight at you, over you and right to the rim, no matter who you are or how famous your school’s name is.

“I don’t like to slow the ball down. I like to let our guys play,” Florida Gulf Coast coach Andy Enfield said after his players kept the pedal to the metal and crushed San Diego State, 81-71, in the NCAA Round of 32. “I think it’s extremely difficult to guard an offense when players have freedom and they can play within a system.”

No kidding, San Diego State says. Amen, Georgetown adds. The No. 7 and No. 2 seeds, respectively, are sitting home instead of heading to the Sweet 16. As they watch the No. 15 seed, the lowest ever to go that far in the tournament, they’re actually not wondering what hit them.

They knew what it was. They just couldn’t stop it.

“Their transition—you’re watching film on a team, you really don’t get to go through it ‘til you’re out there on the floor,” Aztecs senior guard Chase Tapley said, “and towards the end of the game, they just killed us in transition, and we didn’t get back. We didn’t counter their runs.

“They’re just a good team that does what their coaches say, and ... just embrace each other and feed off each other and don’t care about who’s getting the most points.”

The FGCU stampede came early in the second half against Georgetown. Against San Diego State, it came midway through the second half. When it began, the Eagles led a back-and-forth game 54-52; when it ended with about four minutes left, some 7 1/2 minutes later, FGCU had scored 17 consecutive points and led 71-52.

And that was before two more ridiculous dunks were airmailed in during the final minutes, both from Brett Comer to Eric McKnight, although neither was as nasty as the one in the first half when Comer tossed a lob off-target and McKnight still corralled it and tomahawked it down.

Comer’s 14 assists Sunday gave him 24 in the two NCAA games. Thompson matched the 23 points he scored against Georgetown. Sherwood Brown got into foul trouble late in the first half and early in the second but finished with 17. McKnight, neutralized by foul trouble against Georgetown, scored nine (just missing becoming the sixth Eagle in double figures) and blocked four shots.

Between the 17 turnovers FGCU forced, the five blocked shots and the long stretches of stopping San Diego State from scoring, the Eagles turned into a hybrid of the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, Arkansas’s 40 Minutes of Hell and Houston’s old Phi Slama Jama.

Most important, they never eased up.

“We got on a run,” Comer said, “and when we push the ball, we get the crowd behind us, and we get a dunk, and then we go to the other end and get a stop and another dunk. It’s hard to try to turn the momentum back like that. You can try calling a timeout or try to draw a foul or something like that, but it’s hard when we keep going and going and going at you.”

And when conventional wisdom dictated in both games that they play it safe, they did nothing of the sort. No playing the mid-major, underdog strategy of being careful and conservative to protect a lead against a Goliath. No taking the air out of the ball or counting on clinching it at the line.

For one reason, there’s no need to concede that the opponent is superior, even if it comes from a league with a multi-million-dollar television contract and sends waves of players to the NBA every year.

“They play with a swagger, and they have a right to do that,” San Diego State coach Steve Fisher said. “You can have that look and feel, but you have to compete and play to earn your spurs, and they’ve done that.

“If we had shirts and skins and put all 64 teams in a room, you wouldn’t consider them anything other than right in the mix with the upper tier of the people that we’re out playing. And they’ve played that way, and they believe that they’re good, and that’s a huge part of winning.”

Neither Fisher nor his players spent much time dwelling on their own mistakes. Georgetown’s players and coach spent more time, although they were very generous with their compliments to the largely-unknown program. It seemed to everybody then that the Hoyas had lost, rather than FGCU had won, despite what their own eyes had seen.

Now? The better team clearly won, and everybody’s perceptions have been altered. Nothing separates the ability of the FGCU players and the free rein they get from their coach, from their big-name opposition—except for those big names.

FGCU is as big, fast, explosive and driven as everybody else in the Sweet 16—and until third-seeded Florida proves otherwise in the regional semifinal on Friday, there’s no reason to be surprised at what they’ve done.

There’s also no reason for Enfield to pull back on the reins. Dunk City is headed your way, and Dunk City isn’t about to put the brakes on itself now.